About Me

Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!

Friday, January 29, 2016

There is a lot of hoopla about a recent trojan change in Social Security included in with HR 1314 late in 2015.

First, a good thing is that it extended any threat from the debt ceiling until early 2017 (for a new president), so there’s no threat of disruption from another round of “parlor timocracy”. Social Security explains that here.

Further, it seems that some funds were moved from retirement to disability through 2022, which might some day destabilize the retirement fund.

But the main course is the extension of “deeming” for couples to age 70 (it had been through full retirement age at 66). It also means that those receiving subordinate benefits (like spouses, ex-spouses, and certain other dependents) on the basis of a primary worker who has suspended his or her benefits, will soon stop receiving the benefits. Forbes explains this best in an article by Laurence Kotikoff, Oct. 28, 2015. There are a lot of other catchy links about this problem on the web (and scare ads on newspaper sites) that provide little or no real explanation. But this seems to be the first time people receiving existing benefits will be cut off.

Again, the bill seems to penalize people with complicated relational or family situations and with less personal independence.

Friday, January 15, 2016

Kiplinger has anarticlein Yahoo! about what retirees should do now, that the stock market is in correction and could get worse.

The problem is, us retirees often depend on accumulated (sometimes inherited) wealth to support us without working for someone else, or having to work about being cheesy in selling people things.
But what supports you in the stock market is the expectation that the assets you have can make money around the world, and they’re easily disrupted by forces you have no direct control over.

Most portfolios have some oil, which obviously goes down. Most portfolios do business with China, which has the karma problem of maintaining growth while abating pollution, becoming answerable to human rights problems (post-Communism) and most of all exploiting workers living in dorms.
So we retirees become the “Guilty Remnant”. Think of that the next time a telemarketer calls and you don’t want to talk to him at all. He or she has to make a living.

Saturday, January 09, 2016

Page B4 of the Saturday New York Times has a piece by Constance Gustke, “The Importance of Preparing for a Natural Disaster” especially for the elderly. But the byline on the front “Business Day” page read “A strong social network can help older Americans get the help they need in time of emergency.” And that doesn’t mean Facebook.

There’s a story about an elderly woman who had lived 45 years in Middletown CA without incident, before a catastrophic fire.

Overwhelming fires, long tracking tornadoes, river floods (from unusual tropical rain events), and hurricanes may be becoming stronger because of climate change. The most likely of these is the fire issue.

Other less likely catastrophes could come from terrorism or even from space weather (such as extreme solar storms). Earthquake danger would seem to be rather constant, but California is overdue, and rarer huge (volcanic) events are possible in other parts of the country, especially Yellowstone and the Pacific Northwest.

Seniors who downsize can take care to make sure that they move into properties well above any possible flood risk, and away from fire prone areas in exurbs. The latter may be harder to predict, as grass fires in the plains happen as well as mountain forest fires. For tornado risk, areas south of Dallas-Ft. Worth generally have lower risk of large tornadoes than farther North (despite the Dec. 26 incident) or East because cold air masses usually don’t penetrate that far south. Despite the popularity of Florida, it seems to me that coastal living should be avoided, although some people tell me that the best high-rise properties in Florida are built to withstand Category 5 hurricanes. I don’t know if that’s really true.

Tuesday, January 05, 2016

The Wall Street Journal offers a perspective by Andrew G. Biggs, “New evidence on the phony ‘retirement crisis’”, p. A11 Tuesday. The CBO estimated retirement incomes based on promised Social Security benefits, and found most workers and spouses born in the 1960s and retiring before 2030 as doing reasonably well, if you include some savings and other retirement plans. The problem is that the Social Security administration is underfunded by 24% over the next 75 years with respect to promised benefits.

Removing all wage ceilings on the FICA tax would make up 41% of the shortfall. Raising the FICA tax alone would require a total tax (employee and employer) of 16.87% (right now it is 12.4%).

In the video above, Lindsey Graham (R-SC) wants current retiree to give up some of their COLA increases (based on means), but the COLA is much less than a few hundred dollars a month. He talks about Simpson-Bowles .

Sunday, January 03, 2016

The Times seems to be with Democratic proposals that the Wage Base should be increased as well as (or instead of retirement age) but believes that more should be done for lower income people who don’t benefit from longer life expectancies. The NYT remains somewhat askance on privatization, which would return control to Wall Street.

No one is facing the question cleanly, whether “better off” Social Security recipients today “have a right” to regard their FICA contributions (and their employers’) as like annuity premiums.

My own needs would be to learn to use Sibelius (music composition software) better, and video editing through Final Cut. I’ll have to look into the Tech Center right here in Crystal City, but maybe Osher offers something.

Analytics

Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy for billretires.blogspot.com

If you require any more information or have any questions about our privacy policy, please feel free to contact us by email at JBoushka@aol.com.

At billretires.blogspot.com , the privacy of my visitors is of extreme importance to me. This privacy policy document outlines the types of personal information is received and collected by billretires.blogspot.com and how it is used.

Log Files Like many other Web sites, billretires.blogspot.com makes use of log files. The information inside the log files includes internet protocol ( IP ) addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider ( ISP ), date/time stamp, referring/exit pages, and number of clicks to analyze trends, administer the site, track user’s movement around the site, and gather demographic information. IP addresses, and other such information are not linked to any information that is personally identifiable.

Cookies and Web Beacons billretires.blogspot.com does not use cookies.

DoubleClick DART Cookie

.:: Google, as a third party vendor, uses cookies to serve ads on billretires.blogspot.com .
.:: Google's use of the DART cookie enables it to serve ads to your users based on their visit to billretires.blogspot.com and other sites on the Internet.
.:: Users may opt out of the use of the DART cookie by visiting the Google ad and content network privacy policy at the following link.

Some of my advertising partners may use cookies and web beacons on our site. My advertising partners include ....... Google Adsense

These third-party ad servers or ad networks use technology to the advertisements and links that appear on billretires.blogspot.com send directly to your browsers. They automatically receive your IP address when this occurs. Other technologies ( such as cookies, JavaScript, or Web Beacons ) may also be used by the third-party ad networks to measure the effectiveness of their advertisements and / or to personalize the advertising content that you see.

billretires.blogspot.com has no access to or control over these cookies that are used by third-party advertisers.

You should consult the respective privacy policies of these third-party ad servers for more detailed information on their practices as well as for instructions about how to opt-out of certain practices. billretires.blogspot.com 's privacy policy does not apply to, and we cannot control the activities of, such other advertisers or web sites.

If you wish to disable cookies, you may do so through your individual browser options. More detailed information about cookie management with specific web browsers can be found at the browsers' respective websites.